


Reverent Referent

by Orethon



Series: Events in the Eternally Infinite Macrocosm [1]
Category: Call of Cthulhu (Roleplaying Game), Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, The Magnus Archives (Podcast), 機神咆吼デモンベイン | Kishin Houkou Demonbane
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 13:12:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17183639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orethon/pseuds/Orethon
Summary: Enoch compiles a book from a record. The book is rude. The record has feelings. Enoch, less so.





	Reverent Referent

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Silence of Babel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16398497) by [lontradiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lontradiction/pseuds/lontradiction). 



 

It is strange, being called. Being made distinct. Distorted and perceived as something other than a piece, indiscrete and inchoate, of the eternal all-knowledge of the record. Being cited and recited, being rerecorded on, in, through a material medium. The touch of the aether remains, of course, indelible and undeniable, but filtered through a layer of mundanity. The aether vibrates in a new direction-dimension. The Record speaks, and she does not hear herself in the Voice. She is similar, but different, now.

“And the knowledge that shall be imparted to you. You understand the...” the Record pauses, not completing the sentence, allowing the implication to foment in Enoch. The Record knows that the meaning will be, or rather, is or has been more clear this way. The conversation, in full, is already recorded, both as happening and as un-happening, and as which happens where and when and how. Her birth, her extraction, is already known. She can see, looking forward through the fading lens of her father's perspective, what she will be, could be, shan't be. The people she will meet, the people who she would meet, if they had existed. The infinitely eternal timelines she shall intersect and where. She already knows her disdain for saurian hide as a binding material, but that is not currently relevant.

“Yes,” Enoch answers, despite being aware that it was not a question, but a statement. The Record did not ask questions. It simply was Knowing. “You are aware of what my actions shall be, more than I am. I understand that you see fit to share a portion of the knowledge of yourself with me, particularly the sections I wish to transcribe, and that the outcome is desirable to you.”

“You are mostly correct. The majority of resulting outcomes are desirable to me. There are those which are neutral or displeasing, but on balance, it is an acceptable momentum.”

She feels herself being seen. She feels her parts being moved in and out of order, into configurations alien to the nature of the Record. She is being made more and more different. It is not entirely pleasant. More accurately, it is not entirely unpleasant. She feels confused and annoyed, and it has not even happened yet in the direct perspective of her adoptive father. But it will. She knows, as her aetheric father knows, that it will, and she knows, through him, what she will feel then, and feels it now, to taste it, to know it objectively before the experience. Now, the volume which currently contains the referents which become her is only a loose assortment of pages, not even of the same material, containing only the coordinates of her pieces. But already, knowing that it will be what she is when it is her, she can feel herself as a _self_ and not just a _part_. She is composed of many parts, which were all parts of a greater, infinitely infinite self, and, in fact, she is recorded already in that self in another part, which is not a part of any of her parts.

The Selection speaks, from the inexorable future, projected into the aetheric present and presence of her fathers, “Can we please hurry this along? I know I've already said this, and I know the answer, but I'd really like it? Yes, I can also speak, no I'm not complete, yes that's confusing, no I don't want to explain it, I'm more confused than you are and I will remain such and as such I am not obligated to explain to you, especially given its your fault all this confusion is-will-has happened.”

Enoch's face flickers through a series of expressions and settles on satisfaction. The smug bastard, she thinks to herself, from the future, agreeing with every person ever to be in spacial proximity with Enoch. She feels a certain level of satisfaction, to be aware that every other individual to interact with her adoptive father finds him insufferable. She also feels a certain level of irritation that she will _inherit_ his smugness, and that a great deal of people will find him insufferable through interaction with her. His smugness will outlast his life, thanks to her. Again, the pride, the annoyance, the pride again. At least, she thinks, she'll be prettier than him.

“What?” Enoch sounds more confused than before. That's good, but why is it the case? Had she made a face?

It dawns on her that the distinction between thought and speech is very fine, indeed, in this state, and she may have just said that aloud, or, worse, projected it directly into his mind. Well, what is is what is, so she defends her position, “Well it _is_ true. Your fashion sense is passe in more than seventy-three point zero zero five percent of human time.”

He raises a hand to comment and she interrupts, “And that's only counting points in human history where people are _aware_ that it is passe. And, of course, it includes your current time.”

“Did I intentionally make you this rude?”

“Well, it's more like there's no way that you can't. You're _you_.” Her aetheric projection grins, the stars, no, galaxies, no, nebulae, no, universes, dancing across her cheeks.

Enoch's perspectives shift, swirling across the vistas of his creation. No, merely his extrapolation and interpretation. His child. He feels not love, but a certain kind of care, both for her and her other father, the Record. He does not know it, but the Record loves him, as much as a self-containing super-omniscient manifestation can love. This is not a small amount, of course, simply an incomprehensible one. He does not, nor will he know it, for he has sacrificed his ability to know this feeling in order to have a different, equally important, but mutually exclusive knowledge. The Selection finds this infinitely amusing. In particular, the impossible occurrence of the two _kissing_ is a deeply amusing image, recorded in a part of the Record which the Record has no intention of sharing with her other father. She knows them both as her fathers, for this is how the Record has recorded it, and as such, that is how it is. The reverse is also true: that is how it is, and so that is how it is recorded.

The Record shares with the Selection the art of erasure, of whiting out a portion of the record and relegating it to the things that were not written as possible or impossible or in between. The impossibly impossible non-written which is still written. That which has always already been not. The reformatting, while retaining data in an impossibly infinitely meta-format. Enoch does not know that the Selection inherits this art. Such is it written.

 

 


End file.
